Dakota Winters
Background History The daughter of kinfolk, Dakota was shipped off to Saint Claire and the Hidden Walk when she had her First Change to be put under the tutelage of her older cousin, Alicia, who was already a fixture at the sept. She arrived Halloween of 2002. She proved to be a knowledge-hungry cub who was, in her early days, also known for being pretty feisty for a pup of Unicorn. She earned the name Faces-Down-Another’s-Rage for refusing to be intimidated by older cubs and Garou and eager to prove her mettle. No sooner was she out the cubhood gates then she was tearing off at full speed. It was straight into the Sept Alpha Megan’s honorable Stag pack, by invitation no less, along with her cousin who was tribe elder and with other elders and high rankers. Starved as she was for learning any rite or gift someone would teach her, it wasn’t long before she had wedged herself in the position of first Master of Rites and then Gatekeeper - all while she was still Cliath. A surprise marriage to Glass Walker kinfolk, Jeremy, and two kinfolk sons later and she felt up to snuff to challenge for Fostern. She completed her tests and was waiting for final acknowledgement. Then it all crashed down. A dispute with a Shadow Lord over territory and the rights of her husband to defend himself blew rapidly into an ugly storm. Dakota, feeling in the right and bolstered by years of sitting on a pedestal and her own ego, felt confident enough to even snarl in the face of the Adren sept alpha. With punishments about to be rained down on her and her husband facing the death penalty, the Child of Gaia sent her family into hiding and fled to the Western Eye in the early months of 2008. She didn’t escape punishment entirely. While her fellow tribemates were sympathetic to her wanting to protect her family, having abandoned her position of Gatekeeper was still a severe fault. To earn her place at the sept, redeem her failure, and to earn the right to re-challenge for her ungiven rank she would spend the entire span of five years, a year for each phase of the moon, assisting the Guardians and Elders and confined to the bawn. It was her sole duty to rededicate herself only to Gaia and the well-being of the caern. And so for five years, she was the lowest of the sept, performing whatever duties the resident Garou saw fit for her to assist with. One fight was brutal enough it left her right arm hanging by threads, an injury that almost killed her and remains a deep scar to this day. Most of it was peaceful, and she used her time in penance to continue to learn from the wise elder Theurges. In the spring of 2011, she was deemed to have completed her service. Humbler and wiser, she recreated the talens she had for her initially failed Fostern challenge. The Elders accepted, and she was given rank and place among the sept. For all she had finally succeeded, it was with a great cost. Her relationship with Jeremy was badly strained, her sons, only infants when she last truly saw them, not children who didn’t know her. While the family worked to repair their void, old fears on Jeremy’s part about the Garou would keep him separated and he travelled frequently with the boys to avoid anyone still looking for him, though he did help from the shadows when he could. In the meantime, Dakota had joined with the Guardian pack under Moose to put her years of bawn knowledge to use. She hadn’t quite paid attention to the totem’s ban, however, and when spring rolled back around she was made aware Moose insisted his followers find the strongest mate and breed. Awkward. Her husband was over in Thailand and neither able to reach the other. So, having come to be familiar with the local kinpack hidden in the Muir Woods, Dakota sought her mate among them. In the spring of 2012 she gave birth to three pups, one of whom had bred true. She watched over them until they were old enough to be tended by the pack before returning to her duties. For all she was doing well, something just wasn’t right. Her abandonment of the Hidden Walk still haunted her and ultimately she decided she needed to go tie up loose ends. Alicia grudgingly followed her back north, and Dakota returned to the Hidden Walk in April of 2014. She had her meets and greets with old and new faces upon her return and found that over all there wasn’t much in the way of bad blood. Bolstered, she made amends to the Garou she had felt she wronged - among them Jamethon, one of her oldest teachers and peers, who had nominated her personally for the very position of Gatekeeper that she had abandoned. A brief trial later and her apology was accepted. Settling back into her old home, Dakota came to the decision to stay and ultimately began a new back with Alicia under the Black Unicorn. Since then, she’s been helping topple DNA, razing the Hellfire pack who followed Green Dragon and even summoning the Talons of Horus to battle the corrupt totem, and rescuing an infant Spiral Homid cub that came to be adopted by her cousin and Alicia’s kinfolk brother, Benedict, after she and Jamethon Exorcised the Black Spiral kinfetch. In October of 2014, as the resident Ritemistress stepped down to attend other duties, Dakota felt confident enough to step up. In December of that year, she even developed a brand new ritual of Honoring The Spirit Friend. Bolstered by her successes, she challenged her old friend Kevin for the rank of Adren and succeeded at the turn of 2015. Current Events Investigations into the Spiral Revolution continue. In mid-February 2015, an experiment is organized to try and puzzle out the workings behind the Spiral glyphs. The danger of getting badly Tainted or frenzying is deemed very high. Dakota, in light of being an experienced Theurge but not the sept's highest rank, is asked to volunteer for the job. She accepts, though not without ensuring she's protected, creating a talen along with Jamethon to ensure she's got an early warning should things go south. With her pack keeping watch, she's able to research a holographic model map of the city and the glyphs long enough to learn about some of the forces and players behind it before the talen triggers and drives her into a fox frenzy to escape. Minus what's going to amount to a lot of sleepless nights, she seems left no worse off with valuable information in her pocket. On February 3rd, 2016 after a large amount of time and effort, Dakota completed creation of her first fetish. Along with that made by Jamethon at the same time, the sept was now the birthplace of two fetishes in a very, very long time. Her creation was called an omen brush, a modern recreation of an ancient White Howler fetish of the same name and used to divine the past, present, and future. Not long after, at the end of March, it was decided that her pack, Excelsior, had run its course and it was time for the Garou involved to follow new callings. Appearance In homid, Dakota appears as a woman in her late twenties and of average height and weight, athletic and fit but neither overbuilt or too lean. She's predominantly caucasian in appearance, but had the thick, wavy hair one might expect better suited on a Mediterranean woman - save her's is brown in color instead of black. Her eyes are large and expressive, a dark brown in color, though couched in the fewest hints of early creases. She wears basic rustic-styled 'trendy' clothing, a sort of Bohemian flare, though generally doesn't wear much in the way of jewelry. In her wolf forms, she clearly displays her close Fury heritage, in a glossy dark pelt that appears black until it's under significant sunlight in which it shows itself to be a very dark brown. Her throat is marked with a splash of white and her eyes are a clear deep amber. The evidence of old scars is generally hidden under clothing or fur, save her hands which have old burn-like scars tinged grey-black, like someone had marked them with ash. A jagged, large scar runs from the back of her right shoulder blade up across and over her collar bone to her chest. Normal eyes may see it as some sign of an accident with a power tool or a car, though close inspection to those familiar suggests the ragged edges look more like marks of gigantic teeth. Hooks and Contacts *She's got connections at the Western Eye among the Garou and kin populations *She is utterly voracious when it comes to ritual knowledge. No, serious, she's a shark - she'll try to learn whatever you wanna offer. She's equally delighted to teach, so don't be afraid to ask. She's a devout believer in the sharing of knowledge. ((OOC: If you wanna learn something that would be appropriate to you, just ask!)) *I'm not opposed to someone wishing to play her Lupus pup. Just let me know! Relevant Sheet Info Fetishes and Talens * Fetish: Omen Brush. Level 1, Gnosis 5. This fetish is a small, wood-handled paintbrush polished and sealed with beeswax. It is carved with the Garou glyphs for 'sight', 'history', and 'future' as well as Pictish-style symbology of a squirrel, mirror, and time, all of which are carefully inlaid with teeny bits of emerald. The bristles are made of the carefully trimmed and shaped hair from an albino squirrel, held in place with a thin copper band. It is often kept in a small protective pouch of tanned leather and hide made of the squirrel who's fur provided the brushhead. ** System: Made with the fur of an albino animal (though the Howlers sometimes used the fur of prophetic white-coated Garou), then bound with the same kind of spirit. When activated, the brush allows its wielder to paint visions of what has come before and what will happen in the future. An Intelligence + Enigmas roll (difficulty 7) is required to interpret the painting's significance and symbolism. Leadership Category:Homid Category:Theurge Category:Children of Gaia Category:Adren Category:Past PCs